Turning of the Leaf
by SwizzleKiss878
Summary: “I always have your back,” he had said distractedly while praying that she understood him. (GSR). Grissom needs some help stringing his thoughts together.


**A/N:** The idea for this story came to me while watching re-runs of CSI on Spike (because once a week just isn't enough...:-p). I wondered what the characters were thinking during certain scenes, and I added a storyline to tie it all together (I'm not sure how much of a plot it is, however). Spoilers through season 4 to be safe. My second attempt at a fanfic. All mistakes are my own entirely. Enjoy...

It was a typical double homicide—one man, one woman—one wedding ring, wrong woman. The bottle of wine and the fact that the two bodies were found in a hotel suite had only made it all the more obvious. Grissom wasn't one to go on hunches, but he thought he had this one pegged right from the start.

Sara sighed as she put down her kit. "Can't they think of anything more creative?"

Grissom had to smirk at her comment. She was apparently sharing his exact thoughts on the matter. "What, you have this one solved already?"

She snapped on a glove. "Call it instinct," she said with a smile. "But I know better than to work on hunches. Had a good teacher."

Grissom couldn't help but feel a swell of pride as she took out her camera and started snapping away at the woman lying on the bed. He watched her work for a few seconds, enjoying the finally comfortable silence between them. More and more things were beginning to feel comfortable again concerning him and Sara, an unspoken truce called in the cold war the two seemed to have been engaged in for the past few months. He welcomed the change; he had been worried that they both were nearing the point when they wouldn't be able to fight any longer. Grissom thought back on the past year. Sara seemed so different now as she dusted the bedpost for prints, stronger than she had been before. He let his thoughts wander as he pretended to search the man for evidence.

…………………………………………………..

She had casually walked up to him, as if they were simply employer and employee—no strings attached. Nonchalantly handing over her findings from his vic, she had stated what she collected. "Samples from your suspect. There's nothing but a few track marks. No defensive wounds, no bruising. Junkies usually bruise if you breathe on them too hard. She is a pile of twigs, very frail."

…_She is a pile of twigs, very frail._ He turned her last statement over in his head as he gazed into her eyes. Was that supposed to be a subtle hint? She had not lost eye contact nor changed her demeanor as she said it.

"What?" She seemed impatient and a shade confused. _She has changed in the past few months…_

Not knowing what else to say at the time, he responded truthfully. "I haven't seen you for a while, have I?" Was he running out of time—was it finally too late?

She had furrowed her brow at this. "You see me every day." Clearly finished, she had walked away. She was right; he did see her every day. Or did he? Did he even know who this woman was anymore? He hadn't truly looked into those eyes of hers in a long time. Too long.

……………………………………………….

The voice of Doc Robbins shook him out of his reflection. "I'm sorry, Doc, what did you say?"

"I said that if you released his arm, we would be able to take the both of them back to the morgue."

Grissom promptly did so and stepped back. "Right. Sorry, Doc." It didn't look like he had heard him.

"And stop staring at me. You're making me uncomfortable." There was a light tone to Sara's voice and she gently smiled.

"I wasn't staring, I was…studying." Grissom said after a beat.

"Studying?" She raised an eyebrow. "Or checking up on me?"

"The former." When she didn't look convinced, he added, "Sara, do you honestly think I don't trust your abilities as a CSI—after all this time?"

She still didn't look completely satisfied with his answer. Instead, she just looked down and continued to process the bed.

Grissom thought a moment. This wasn't the answer he wanted from her. He had almost been counting on that Sara Sidle grin of hers that always made everything seem all right, even if it wasn't. _I guess I have given her reason to think otherwise. _"Sara," he said, "Don't answer that."

……………………………………………….

The four CSIs had been standing in a tight square with Grissom and Catherine on one side and Nick and Sara on the other side, facing them. The group had been arguing about who got to work the case and Grissom had stepped in to extinguish the flames before they started.

"I've got the most high-profile cases under my belt; I think that the Sheriff would rest easier knowing that I was heading it up." Catherine had reasoned.

"It's a big department. Lots of room at the top." Sara logically had replied.

Nick had looked to Grissom partly to state his opinion and partly to avoid fueling a verbal catfight between the two female investigators. "We wouldn't ask for it if we couldn't do it." He honestly said.

He didn't know what to do. He needed to think. He had looked down at the ground to avoid eye contact from anyone and to buy himself time to deliberate. When he finally looked up, he had found those eyes staring into his. He had stared right back, silently pleading with her to understand. He hated pulling rank.

She got angrier as she read his look. Those eyes were almost glaring at him now. She shook her head. "Fine." She had quipped. She wasn't happy with him at all. She had turned and walked away. He had hurt her again.

He almost didn't hear Catherine's question. "You going to have my back?" She had seemed worried about her relationship with her two colleagues who now had seemed to want to have nothing to do with her.

_Forget about Catherine's relationship with her co-workers;_ Grissom thought, _compared to mine, she's Sara's closest friend._ He suddenly realized he needed to give his new head CSI the support she needed right now; he couldn't afford to ruin another friendship. "I always have your back." He had said distractedly while praying that Sara understood him.

……………………………………………

"You okay, Sport?" Nick asked as he walked into the breakroom for some coffee.

"What makes you think I'm not?" Sara replied from her perch at the table.

"Something Grissom said?" Catherine half-joked as she, too, ambled in for a dose of caffeine.

She looked up from her forensics journal. "Why does everyone always resort to Grissom when it looks like I'm having a rough night?" She didn't know whether she was amused or confused.

Catherine shrugged. "Because that's usually the case?" She offered.

Sara mock-glared at the older woman.

"Well, it is!"

"I hate to admit it, Sara," Nick tried to reason, "but she's right."

Sara slumped back down into her forensics journal. _Yeah, yeah, tell me something I haven't heard before._ She tried to think of the times when Grissom wasn't the cause of her frustration, but instead came up with the multitude of occasions when he had been. Like her humbling dinner invitation. The 'I'm Sorry, Don't Leave' Plant. The chiding, "This is not a negotiation, Sara." How he had pulled rank on her with the Julie Waters case—"… I think that the Sheriff would rest easier knowing that I was heading it up…" Was he trying to spoil her career?

She was so caught up in her thinking that she hadn't noticed Catherine and Nick leave and Grissom come in.

He took a seat across from her. "Sara, can we…talk?"

She looked up at him from her article with a raised brow.

He glanced down at the piece she had been reading. "It's not really as good as the title makes it out to be. Almost completely inaccurate."

She only blinked at him. _Well, you're the one who recommended the frickin' magazine to me!_

"Anyway. I didn't come in here to discuss literature." _On with it, Gil. She might just get up and leave…_

"What did you come in here for, then?" She was trying to be patient with him.

"I just want to tell you that I'm sorry for the way I behaved at the scene tonight. It was…" He tried to search for the right word. "Out of line."

Sara knitted her brow at his admission. _I must have said those words to him a thousand times._ "Grissom, you _are_ the supervisor," she gently reminded him, "But you sound like me." _Apologizing for 'out-of-line' behavior. Yep,_ she thought sadly, _two of a kind._

A corner of his mouth turned up slightly. _Like teacher, like student, I suppose._ "I'm just trying to clear the air. I had no right to make you think that I didn't trust you or your abilities. I do. I really do."

Sara shrugged. "It's all right." _After all, he has done this before and just turned the other cheek. _"Why are you making this bigger than it is?"

Then, Grissom did a thing he never thought possible. He gently took her hand that had been resting on the table and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm trying to turn over a new leaf," he swallowed. "And in order to complete the turning of said leaf, Miss Sidle, I have found that I need help in doing so."

Now Sara was just confused. She stared at him, then down at their entwined fingers, then back up at him. "Excuse me?"

_Oh no, I've scared her. She's going to run away. Any second now. She's going to need to refill her coffee mug or go to the bathroom or go save the world._ But she didn't get up, nor did she move her hand away.

Instead, she just said, "You want me to help you turn your leaf?"

He lightly chuckled and ran his thumb over the back over her hand. "Yes, I suppose you could put it that way."

Fin


End file.
